October 25, 2005
Mashup: Gwen Stefani vs Kraftwerk
The assignment this week was to create a 2-minute sound file. We were taught how to use a variety of different recording devices and audio processing tools (like Audacity, ProTools, Marantz Recorders, &c), but Sai and I ended up doing everything in Garageband.
We mixed Kraftwerk's The Robots with Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl, using some samples from other songs including a bit from Cam'Ron's Hey Ma and The New Radicals' You Get What You Give.
There were two important parts of the process: First, we needed to be able to find parts of the songs that isolated either the vocals or the drum or beats lines in order to cleanly import them as loops into Garageband. Next time I do this I'm going to try to use some of Audacity's filters to pick out the drum-n-bass line out from *under* a vocals track, instead of looking for a song that had the d-n-b line all on its own.
The second tip was to make loops of the samples instead of just cutting them. Use of the Dashboard widget bpm widget was integral to this, because we had to figure out the bpm of the sample in order to make sure everything lined up correctly.
After the loop was set with the correct beat, you can choose "Add Loop to Library" from the Edit menu (I think) and then you can import that loop from the loop library. If you do it this way, Garageband keeps track of the bpm of everything so that it all sounds good together. It's kind of magical when you see that you can just drop the loops in with each other and watch (hear) them sync up.
Posted October 25, 2005 12:55 PM. Categories: Assignments , Week 7 | Permalink